OpenArt and S:t Nicolai church finds common ground

OpenArt has long had a close connection to the Church of Sweden in Örebro, both as a sponsor and as a placement for art in the heart of the city, both inside the church and outside it. This year the process begins earlier than usual. Instead of meeting the community for the first time during the summer exhibition, the artists and the groups in the church are given time to get to know one another through conversations and workshops at an earlier stage in the process. This year Vox, the choir of Nicolaikyrkan, 90 confirmation students and the community group Träffpunkt have met with the artists.

The intention is not to create finished works on site, but to let the encounters themselves become part of the artists’ process. When OpenArt opens this summer, traces of these conversations and collaborations will be visible — in materials, in expressions, and in the relationships built over the winter.

Artists Tova Lilja and Emil Faisal Hasselberg have been working with the students in the confirmation groups. Here, the young participants get to explore their own forms of expression through engravings, that will later become part of the duo’s artwork in the city. Tova Lilja's work as an individual artist revolves around the traces people leave behind, while Emil Faisal Hasselberg often works with recycled metal. Both look forward to letting the confirmation students’ ideas and hands become part of what takes shape.

“It’s going to be great fun to collaborate with the young people in the church, to have them involved in the process both in terms of ideas and execution,” says Emil Faisal Hasselberg.

“The confirmation students will get to make engravings, which we will then use in a wind chime. They will be very involved in the artwork,” says Tova Lilja.

For Open Art, the hope is that the groups in the church will feel part of something larger, and that the artists will carry new perspectives into their work. It is in the meeting between people that new ideas take shape — and this year, that meeting begins long before the exhibition opens.

Read the full article in Swedish at svenskakyrkan.se.

About Tova & Emil

Tova Lilja and Emil Faisal Hasselberg

Together, the artists Tova and Emil explore each other’s artistic processes, expressions, and differences with curiosity. A recurring theme in their collaborative work is creating in dialogue with the forces of nature. Tova is from Örebro, and she and Emil study together at Umeå Academy of Fine Arts.

Tova Lilja works with visual and conceptual art. Conceptual art means that the idea is more important than the physical object, the thought behind the work matters more than how it looks. Tova follows traces left behind by people, dreams, memories, and the magical. The works become images of what the artist herself experiences and interprets.

Emil Faisal Hasselberg combines craftsmanship with idea-based creation. He primarily works in metal, producing sculptures and installations from reused materials. With a poetic tone in his practice, he aims to evoke reflections on our relationship with the forest and how we use nature’s resources.

Residencies through Magic Carpets 2026

OpenArt is a part of Magic Carpets 2025–2028.

Magic Carpets is a platform that brings together 17 European cultural organizations that create opportunities for emerging artists to carry out residencies in other countries. Artists are given the chance to explore their artistic practice together with local communities, with the aim of highlighting local characteristics and increasing cultural accessibility, activism, and participation. The diversity of the platform’s members offers a chance to explore different cultural contexts across Europe.